Tectonic shifts that have occurred in previous years in the global media market, causing a radical transformation of modern journalism and the entire media industry, spilled over at one point on the local media scene. The economic crisis, the impact of the Internet, digitalization, social networking and general commercialization, and consequently the trend of increased influence in the field of public relations, mostly have hit the print media in Serbia. All of these significant changes in the field of public discourse have caught Serbian press unprepared both in the system and in terms of technology and human resources. Economically long time exhausted prints, stuck in the process of unfinished transition from one and the information society on the other hand, (rare honorable exceptions) are very slow to mobilize their resources in response to new professional challenges. Media crisis has continued to deepen inevitably causing a crisis of already broached journalistic profession. Impoverished journalists are forced to work on multiple platforms for the same financial impact in real terms at the same time, constantly under the influence of political and commercial fields, including the country (which is only nominally committed to their independence and autonomy), which is frequently converted into “extended hand” of Omni-potent PR industry. All prerequisites for (not classical censorship as we already know it in theory and practice of totalitarian systems) “censorship of critical thinking”, or more precisely self-censorship are not only acquired, but it is as a result of the foregoing causes applied to the newspaper contents. Increasingly rare research (which is particularly worrisome) and interpretative journalism moved to online sphere, leaving extra space to sweeping process of tabloidization and consequently vulgarization of each segment and even the field of politics.
Internet gurus and serious investigators had high expectations that at least Internet will provide us a new freedom and the potential for democratization. Unfortunately, empirical data that have been collected by two U.S. investigators Karin Deutsch Karlekar (Freedom House) and Lee B. Becker (University of Georgia) showed that this optimism was in vain: they estimate that in many parts of the
world freedom of press and expression, as well as other elementary factors of democracy such as freedom of assembly, independence of the judiciary and rule of law are ever more vulnerable. This happens in countries where authoritarian governments (e.g. in Turkey, Russia, Hungary and Ukraine) have endangered civil liberties, but also in countries with a long tradition of democracy, mainly Western European countries, where “mainly economic problems interfere with the ability to demonstrate leadership in these important issues”.9
To expect that the media and the profession be at a high or at least satisfactory level, at a time when the credibility of much of the institutional framework is seriously damaged is unrealistic. But the struggle for the return of professional standards and immeasurable role of print media in the democratization of society – it is not unrealistic. Many theorists and practitioners who, like the author of this paper are aware of that, and argue that print media will not only not disappear, but will with the inevitable changes manage and “after finish of crisis will be able to recover and adapt to the changed circumstances of the media market” (Kljajić, 2012:18). Until then, the only remedy for the acute condition is continuous respect of professional rules, standards, codes and ethical principles, with the necessary system solutions.
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